Lucas Foglia

A Natural Order

May 2 - June 2, 2013

From 2006 through 2010, Lucas Foglia created his series, A Natural Order, by befriending, photographing, and interviewing a network of people who left cities and suburbs to live off the grid. Foglia set off with his camper van and camera and for five years traveled throughout the southeastern States--Tennessee, Virginia, Kentucky, North Carolina, and Georgia--immersing himself in the lives of people living in remote, often alternative, communities. The friendships that grew from these experiences formed the foundations for the photographs he took.  

Foglia describes the pictures as an "interpreted narrative" of life off the grid. They serve as an intimate portrayal of people who, motivated by environmental concerns, religious beliefs, and the global economic recession, build their homes using local materials, obtain their water from nearby springs, and hunt, gather, and grow their own food. His series depicts a real joy in the beauty of nature, and yet also the hardships of living in this way. "I wanted to see if I could find the absolute, if there were communities or individuals who lived off the grid and were wholly self-sufficient."

Lucas Foglia was raised on a small family farm in New York and is currently based in San Francisco. A graduate of Brown University and the Yale School of Art, Foglia's photographs are in the permanent collections of the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Pilara Foundation, and the Rhode Island School of Design Museum of Fine Art. His work has been published in Aperture Magazine, New York Times Magazine, Washington Post Magazine, British Journal of Photography, Contact Sheet, Wired and PDN's 30, among others. Foglia's first book, A Natural Order, was published by Nazraeli Press in 2012.